By Jim Nowlan | Chicago Tribune
The new Dollar General store in my rural Illinois hometown couldn’t open for the longest time because it couldn’t find workers. Apples rotted on the ground at Arends Orchard nearby because the 50-year proprietor couldn’t find help — for the first time in his long history of providing apples and cider to our area.
How many times have you heard this lament from small business owners? “People just don’t want to work anymore.”
Labor force participation as a percentage of possible workers has been trending down in recent decades. One factor out of several possible explanations for workforce reduction? Among the able-bodied in my childhood post-World War II, work was required to eat. Today, it isn’t. Many people, young and not so, have apparently developed lifestyles that support them adequately — to their minds anyway — with no, or minimal, work “on the books,” that is, in a regular job.
I am fascinated, for example, by a family that lives on the edge of my hometown. For at least two decades, the nine members of this “family” have been existing largely to play video games, it seems, and laze around the two-bedroom ranch home that is deteriorating around them, not so slowly. One of the three men in this family has fathered three children by three mothers, some of whom live in the home.
(This account is based on an interview with the father of the 50-ish “patriarch” of the family. My source lets his son and clan live there rent-free, though his patience has reached its end. The source lives elsewhere. Two social worker friends in the area tell me this type of family is far from unique in rural Illinois.)
How does the family support itself? Two of the women are certified nursing assistants and work a few hours a month each at nursing homes. Two of the men are skilled at digital technology. Infrequently, they work off the books, repairing computers. The two seemingly able-bodied men are also on disability, for mental health and physical reasons, respectively.
Read more here.
Jim Nowlan is a former Illinois legislator, state agency director, professor and newspaper columnist. He is co-author, with Melissa Mouritsen and Kent Redfield, of a new edition of “Illinois Politics: A Citizen’s Guide to Power, Politics, and Government” to be released by University of Illinois Press in early 2024.
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